IndieRails

John Nunemaker is a Rails developer, entrepreneur, and indie hacker behind Flipper Cloud, Boxout, and Fireside. He joins us for a wide-ranging conversation about managing a portfolio of products at different stages of growth, how AI has transformed his development workflow, and the unique opportunity (and anxiety) that this moment in tech represents. Related Links Flipper Cloud Boxout Fireside Mom...

Rémi is a former stained-glass master turned freelance Ruby on Rails developer. He writes extensively on software topics on his blog, and he recently wrote a reflection on his return to freelancing this past year. Rémi joins us to share his journey into software development, and the recent transition back to freelancing. Related Links Rémi's Website Newsletter Work Ruby.social LinkedIn Reflecting...

In this episode, Jared Norman joins us to talk about his journey from aspiring game developer to founder of Super Good Software, an agency specializing in e-commerce and Solidus. Jared shares the story of how Spree evolved into Solidus, the role his team played in that transition, and what it's like to build a specialized consultancy around open source e-commerce. We also get into branding, busine...

In this episode, John Athayde joins us to chat about how a student of architecture ends up in software, finding the Ruby and Rails community, working at the intersection of design and development, consulting in user experience, and his work on the Rails Guides refresh project. Related Links Website Twitter Bluesky LinkedIn Meticulous (John's consultancy) Sfumato Farm (John's farm) Ocufii Knightsbr...

Jeremy and Jess turn the corner on a new year with an unedited one-on-one discussion, reflecting on 2025 and looking ahead at 2026.

In this episode of IndieRails , Jess and Jeremy interviewed Jared Brown , co-founder and CEO of Hubstaff . The conversation began with a serendipitous meeting at XO Ruby , where an early-morning parking deck encounter turned into a deeper discussion about SaaS, engineering, and long-term company building. What started as a casual conference conversation ultimately led to this episode. Jared shared...

After more than two years, Ernesto Tagwerker returns to IndieRails to chat about the changing industry landscape and running an agency in the age of AI. Ernesto is the founder of OmbuLabs , makers of FastRuby.io , and maintainers of many open source projects in Ruby and Rails. We talk about upgrading Rails apps with the help of LLMs, their fixed-cost maintenance service Bonsai , new AI-related off...

In this episode, Brian Casel joins IndieRails to talk about how AI is reshaping the day-to-day reality of software development and why full-stack Rails developers might be uniquely positioned to thrive in this new landscape. The conversation digs into the blurring lines between developer and product manager. When you can build the whole thing yourself, you're not just writing code you're making pr...

Wale Olaleye of Rails Fever joins IndieRails to talk about what it really takes to build a consulting business. The conversation spans everything from refining your message and brand, “I help founders with tech so they can focus on operations", to embracing marketing, sales, and networking as essential skills, not dirty words. Wale, Jess, and Jeremy swap stories about outreach experiments, co-work...

In this episode, Jess and Jeremy catch up on life and work, and have a chat about the everyone's favorite topic these days.

In this episode we’re excited to be talking with Anthony Eden , founder & CEO of DNSimple . For those who haven’t come across it yet, DNSimple is a service that makes managing domains and DNS simple and developer-friendly. Like DNS, DNSimple has been around many years. I first met Anthony years back at Less Conference in Atlanta, around the time DNSimple was just getting off the ground.  Jerem...

This special episode was recorded from the Buzzsprout podcast booth on Day 2 of Rails World 2025 in Amsterdam. Our guests (and fellow Rails World attendees) are Jesper Christiansen, Olly Headey, and Andreas Wagner. Together we have a roundtable discussion about our wishlist items as independent Rails devs toward the one-person end of the spectrum. Thank you to Buzzsprout for sponsoring the Rails W...

This special episode was recorded from the Buzzsprout podcast booth on Day 1 of Rails World 2025 in Amsterdam. Our guest, Mariusz Kozieł , is the CEO of Visuality , a Ruby on Rails agency based in Poland. We chat about Mariusz' career progression from developer, to engineering manager, to CTO, and now CEO. We also talk about his and Visuality's efforts to foster technical community with the Ruby C...

docs.search("indie, founder, rails, successful") => Jason Bosco / Typesense In this episode, Jeremy and Jess sit down with Jason Bosco, co-founder of Typesense , an open source, typo-tolerant search engine. Jason shares how he and his co-founder committed to simply showing up every day, putting in consistent effort, no matter how small, and how that patience eventually compounded into success....

In this episode, Jess and Jeremy chat with Matt Swanson, CTO of Arrows, author of Boring Rails, and host of the YAGNI podcast. In addition to his blog, Matt shares a lot of his knowledge about product development on Twitter. We talk with Matt about how Arrows builds software, what it means to be a product engineer, the easiest way for devs to get to $10K MRR, working with generative AI tools, and...

Rhiannon Payne and Justin Bowen are one of the very few couples working together in the Ruby and Rails ecosystem. Justin is a long-time Rails developer, consultant, and AI and computer vision specialist. Rhiannon runs Sea Foam Media and is the Marketing Director for Ruby Central . Together they are building Active Agents , an AI framework for Rails. We chat about their professional backgrounds (Ju...

In this episode we talk to Zeke Gabrielse, solo founder and owner of Keygen , a licensing and distribution API. We get deep in the weeds of running a solo business (much can be applied to any solo-type career working on the same project), how he handled the worst day(s) of his professional life, and much more! Zeke's Links Zeke on X Keygen on X   Keygen website: https://keygen.sh/ Jeremy's Notable...

In this special crossover episode, we make a slight departure from our typical format to chat with Adrian and Yaro from the Friendly Show and Jason from the Code with Jason podcast about a topic near and dear to our hearts: organizing regional Ruby conferences. Adrian is the organizer of Friendly.rb in Bucharest. Jason is the organizer of Sin City Ruby in Las Vegas. And as long-time listeners may...

A few episodes ago, Garrett Dimon shared the story of how he sold his SaaS product Sifter . In this episode, we complete the story arc by catching up with JD Graffam, the buyer and current owner of Sifter. JD is an agency owner who started buying SaaS product companies in 2012. We talk about how his background, how he got started buying businesses, and his approach to making deals and finding the...

In this episode, Jess and Jeremy chat with Radan Skorić, a long-time Ruby and Rails developer and team lead, co-organizer Ruby Zagreb , and author of the forthcoming book: Master Hotwire . We talk about Radan’s background in software, his discovery of Rails in the mid-2000s, technical blogging, writing a book, and technical aspects of Hotwire. Related Links Radan’s Blog Radan’s Twitter Book: Maste...

This week, Jess and Jeremy get into the nitty-gritty of resource allocation for indie makers: how to make the most of your limited time, energy, and capital. As solo and small-team entrepreneurs, we constantly have to make tough calls about where to invest. It's not just about money; it's about what will actually move the needle. They talk through the realities of running lean: how to balance buil...

In this episode of IndieRails, co-founders Ben Curtis and Joshua Wood share the origin story of Honeybadger, an application monitoring tool for Ruby on Rails applications (and many others). They discuss their motivations for starting the company, the challenges they faced in the early days. The conversation also covers their approach to product development, marketing, pricing strategies, expanding...

Our guest for this episode is Garrett Dimon. Garrett is a developer, author, conference speaker and multi time business owner. With some partners, he’s recently formed a company called “Very Good Software” where they own and operate several SaaS apps.   Garrett Dimon is a seasoned software developer and entrepreneur with a passion for front-end development and Ruby on Rails. His journey began in 1...

Our first-ever IndieRails guest returns to the podcast just shy of two years later. Joe Masilotti shares about niching down on Hotwire Native , changes in the related open source libraries, the direction of his consulting work, his parental leave last year, and the process of writing his forthcoming book, Hotwire Native for Rails Developers . (Special discount for listeners in the episode!) Relate...

In this episode, Jeremy & I are excited to share a mic with Jim Remsik. Jim is the Founder and CEO of a digital agency called Flagrant . He is also a conference organizer…he created and hosts the popular Madison + Ruby conference. Jim has held many roles:  MC, speaker, developer, CEO, conference organizer, writer and many more, but I imagine most people know him as someone who is an all around...